Technical Help

Using NRICH with a small screen

NRICH uses a fixed width page layout which fits within a 1000 pixel wide screen at 100% zoom. So, if you can, adjust the resolution of your display so its width is 1000 pixels or more. However, you may have an old small screen, or you may need to use NRICH with a data projector limited to an 800 pixel wide screen. It's very easy. Simply use the scroll bars, and you'll find that we've
adjusted the line length of all problem and article texts so they fit onto an 800 pixel wide screen at 100% zoom.

In the Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers, you can adjust the browser zoom controls to reduce the page to fit. However, all versions of Internet Explorer that we've tested have buggy zoom controls and are best left set at 100%. The IE bugs cause misplaced inline mathematics.

Printing

In most modern browsers you should get the best results by choosing File > Print from your browser menu.

Devices and Browsers

To access all of NRICH, you require a modern (IE10+ or other) HTML5 capable browser.

Displaying Mathematical Notation

We use MathJAX to display mathematical notation. We write maths using TeX or LaTeX, which is then processed by MathJAX - a javascript library - running inside your browser. Right clicking on any mathematical notation will give you a menu where you can adjust your display.

* Important *

If you do use IE, make sure it is configured to decompress gzip encoded javascript correctly. In the Internet Options dialog, in Advanced, there are two relevant HTTP 1.1 settings. The first is "Use HTTP 1.1" which should be checked. The other is "Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections" which should also be checked. Unfortunately, the default here is false which will hit many
schools that use IE through a proxy server.

GeoGebra Interactives

Some of our interactive content is based on the free GeoGebra software. If you are having difficulty loading these resources, check that your computer or tablet can access the GeoGebra website. All of our GeoGebra resources are available on the NRICH GeoGebra
page.

Accessing Flash animations

Use of the Flash plugin is being gradually phased out in all of the browsers.
If you find Flash animations are not working:

In Chrome enter chrome://settings/content/flash in the URL bar and then add nrich.maths.org to the allow list.

Tablets and mobiles do not support Flash. There are a number of Apps that aim to provide Flash player or Flash browser facilities. NRICH can be found in the Puffin Academy library for instance. However, not all animations will run successfully in this way, so we advise testing in situ in advance.

How 'Search NRICH' works

There are lots of ways to find material on NRICH. You may be looking for material linked from the curriculum mapping documents in which case you should start there. You may want to find something that you know was published a few months back - in which case try Past Issues . For
most other purposes - whether you want to search through text, titles, or topics - it's best to start by typing some words into the Search NRICH box.

It helps a little to know how this works...

Using the Search NRICH box

There are two phases to the search. The second phase only happens if the first phase fails to find anything. Both phases search in resource text, resource titles, and resource topics (sometimes known as tags)

Phase 1 - a word search

If you type in geometry algebra you will find documents containing both words. Typing more words will find documents containing some or all of the words you type, ranked according to how many are found, how close they are together, and whether they are team favourites.

This phase of the search will ignore many common words that occur so often they are unhelpful in finding material. It also ignores words of less than 4 letters, and any string of characters that does not make an English word. For example, in phase 1, mul and mult will be ignored, but multi , multiple , and
multiply will all be used.

Phrase searches are not supported, so don't use quotation marks.

It's worth taking the trouble to cast your search in a form that will be picked up by phase 1, because the search can then rank your results by how good a match they are. If your search terms appear close together in the resource, it is likely to appear near the top of the search results.

The NRICH team has some favourite resources which we know you will appreciate. These too will appear high in phase 1 results.

Phase 2 - a string search

If phase 1 fails to find anything at all, a phase 2 search will happen. In this phase, the search will attempt to match the complete string of characters that you typed in the Search NRICH box. In our example, mul and mult will be ignored by the phase 1 search, but will turn up many matches in the phase 2 search.

In phase 2, everything you type is used - spaces and punctuation included.

The Search Results

The main list of search results appears below some links that may help you to refine your search. Use these links to select a problem, game, article, package or key stage. The links to Matching Titles and Matching Topics take you to result pages where these have matched.

Note that these refinement links only appear if they lead to at least one matching resource. You won't be led to an empty results page if you click on them.

Using Google to search NRICH

To do this, type site:nrich.maths.org together with your search in the Google search bar, and you will get results only from NRICH.

The advantage is that Google has better algorithms to find near matches than are supported by our database. The disadvantage is that results are ranked by Google rather than by us. If it helps you, use it.

The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the
NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to
embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.